Infernal Revelation : Collected Episodes 1-4 (9781311980007) (22 page)

Gideon watched it hit the ditch at speed,
pivoting at an angle before flipping sideways across the
scrubland.

Part of him wanted to stop, to go back, to
make sure that Bill Cermack was dead. To finish the job, if
necessary.

He pulled Delilah into his side. The bigger
part of him, the part that was a man, knew it was time to drive on
and let go.

CHAPTER FIVE

Jessie slid aside to
make room as Lily reached the truck.

She put her hands on the edge of the window.
"Derek, no, you can't be here, what are you doing?"

"I'm sorry," Jessie said. "I didn't know
what else to do."

Lily turned to her half-sister. "Why did you
bring him here?"

"I made her tell me where you were," Derek
said. "Get in."

Lily glanced over her shoulder, then climbed
into the truck's cab. She didn't like leaving Barny -- Barnabas --
behind, but Porter's last hateful glare had told her that she was
to be his next target. The further he was from her, the safer he
was.

Derek put it in gear and raced out of the
parking lot.

"What are you doing here?"

"Jessie told me everything."

Lily stared at the girl. "Everything?"

"Enough," Jessie said.

"I don't know exactly what's going on,"
Derek said, checking his mirror, "But I'm not going to let you face
this alone."

Lily craned her neck around to look through
the truck's rear window. "Derek, sweetie, no. You don't know what
you're involved in here. You're in way over your head."

"I tried to tell him." Jessie hung her head.
"I'm sorry. This doesn't end well."

Lily stared at the girl. "Wait, what do you
mean?"

"I don't care," Derek said. "All I need to
know is that I love you, Lil. And I'll stay by you, and stand by
your side no matter what happens. No matter who you are, or who
your real parents are. I don't care about school, about Boston,
about graduation. I just want to be with you."

He turned towards her, and all at once Lily
was lost in the same beautiful blue eyes she'd first crushed on in
Mr. Webley's grade six homeroom. All at once, she remembered each
step of falling for him, of their courtship in excruciating detail.
She remembered the nervousness on his face when he'd first come to
ask her out, she remembered the crack in his voice when her father
had asked him his intentions towards his daughter. She remembered
the smell of his aftershave the first time they'd kissed in the
back of his brother's station wagon, parked in his family's garage,
and she remembered the way his eyes had never left hers the first
time they had made love.

She remembered she loved him, and that she
could never love anyone else. Her heart softened.

The truck hit Porter, ripping in half around
him almost all the way through the engine-block.

***

And there went out
another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat
thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one
another: and there was given unto him a great sword.

The words echoed over and over in Lily's
mind, refracting and becoming a chorus.

She opened her eyes and looked up at the
stars, watching them spin without spinning, unable to hear anything
other than the verse from Revelations repeating in her skull.

She turned her head to the left and saw
Jessie, Jezebel, laying on the shoulder, propping herself up. She
was shouting something.

She turned her head to the right and saw
Derek.

Derek.

She rolled to her side and started crawling
through the glass and plastic that littered the road.

Derek.

His skin was cold.

She didn't like the way his eyes were
staring off into space, unblinking.

It wasn't like him, being dead.

Inconsiderate, really. They had plans.

She had plans, plans to love him forever and
ever.

She looked back towards Jessie, to see if
she was getting this, if she could believe how selfish he was
being, going and dying like that.

Jessie was still yelling.

God, could she be any more
self-absorbed?

"And there went out another horse that was
red," she said.

Red like Derek's truck had been. She looked,
and she saw a dark figure rising from in front of it.

Porter.

Oh man, Derek was going to be pissed that
Porter had wrecked his truck. As soon as he stopped being dead.

She tried to tell him off. "And power was
given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and
that they should kill one another."

Those weren't the right words. Or were
they?

He had killed Derek, after all.

Her Derek.

The sorrow pierced the traumatic fog in her
head all at once, the loss of her boyfriend, of her love, swinging
into a cruelly sharp focus and cutting away her daze. Everything
she could have had, everything she could have been, had been
stripped away from her. She'd lost Derek, but she'd also lost
herself.

She'd been bleeding Lily since that first
accident.

Porter moved and crossed half the distance
between them. Her sorrow turned to rage.

Porter wasn't responsible for all of it, but
he'd taken the last bit of Lily from her. He'd taken her Derek, and
left a void in her soul. From that void was born not only rage, but
a hatred unlike any she'd ever known, a furious tempest that Lily
had never felt.

The birth of Lilith. This hatred was
palpable, almost physical.

Her lip curled as she rose to her feet, and
she felt the hatred tingle in response. "And there was given unto
her--"

Porter moved again, and there he was, great
fist swinging for her skull, but she was gone, and he crushed only
air.

"A great sword." And she was moving ahead,
into him, driving her fist into his belly. She felt her hate
solidify around her hand, around her knuckles, and she kept moving,
kept pushing, and then with a pop there was no resistance and her
hand was free, her slick fist in the cool night air.

She pulled her arm from the cavity in
Porter's abdomen, letting the man fall to his knees on the
asphalt.

Lilith watched him, watched him spasm,
watched him until the last few ragged breaths escaped into the
night.

She turned to Jezebel. "Let's go home."

EPILOGUE

Reverend Robert Carter
stood atop the bluff overlooking the sleepy town of Laton, watching
as the morning sun's first rays crept towards it across the desert.
Martin Klein stood next to him, silent, an unreadable expression on
his face.

"Quite the clusterfuck here, Martin."

"Yes, sir." He glanced at his phone.

He mopped at his brow with an old rag.
"Quite the clusterfuck. That about Porter?"

"Yes, sir. We've extracted some of his
spinal fluid, and should know if it's still viable this
evening."

"Gruesome business."

"Yes, sir."

"God asks harsh things from His faithful,
Martin." Carter said. "We cannot let compassion temper our
faith."

"No, sir."

He looked down at his shoes, looked back up
at his reflection in their black leather. "We're sure the children
have escaped?"

"Yes, sir. Agents have been dispatched to
Odessa and into the eastern salt-flats."

"Has the congregation been relocated?"

Martin glanced towards his home for the last
decade, then looked back down at his phone. "All but Deacon Baker.
He hasn't left his home."

Reverend Carter let out a long sigh. "God
asks sacrifices of us all, Martin."

"Yes, sir."

The Reverend turned and began the walk back
to his car. "Burn it."

"Yes, sir." Klein held the phone up to his
ear. "Bravo team, we're a go. Begin clean up."

He put his phone away, hastening to follow
the Reverend.

Infernal
Revelations

The truth has set them free, but what's
waiting for Lily, Barny, Gideon, Delilah, and Jesse in El Paso?
Safety? More answers? More questions? Can they build lives from the
shattered fragments of trust betrayed, or will they never truly
have a "normal?" Find out in Dark Exodus, the second Profane
Apotheosis story arc.

Dark Exodus is set for a
2015 release date, but you can keep abreast of developments by
signing up for Michael Coorlim's
mailing list
.

About the
Author

Michael Coorlim is a teller of strange
stories for stranger people. He collects them, the oddballs. The
mystics and fire-spinners, the sages and tricksters. He curates
their tales, combines their elements and lets them rattle around
inside his rock-tumbler skull until they gleam, then spills them
loose onto the page for like-minded readers to enjoy.

He writes fast-paced stories about real
people in fantastic situations, plots with just a twist of the
surreal, set in worlds just a shadow's breadth from our own. He's
the author of the Galvanic Century series of Steampunk Thrillers,
the literary apocalyptic short story collection Grief, and the
supernatural serial Profane Apotheosis.

If you want early
notifications of upcoming titles, discounts, giveaways, and other
fun you can subscribe to his new release 
mailing list
.